Increasingly, original works of authorship (hereinafter “works”)—such as books, music, games, and movies—are distributed in digital format to the public over the Internet. Many of these works are protected by copyright, which is a right granted to an author of the work to exclude others from copying, reproducing, or publishing the work under the copyright laws of a particular country. In most countries, it is usually illegal to copy a work protected by copyright without authorization of the copyright holder. An author may include an individual, a business entity, or other type of entity, each of which are sometimes referred to as “copyright holders.” Thus, in most countries it is illegal to copy or distribute a copyrighted work without authorization of the copyright holder.
The duration of protection afforded by a copyright is country specific. For instance, in the United States copyright protection, may last for the life of the author plus 70 years for any work created after Jan. 1, 1978. Similarly, in the case of a joint work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire, the copyright term in the U.S. endures for 70 years after the last surviving author's death. For a work authored by a corporate entity after Jan. 1, 1978, copyright protection in the U.S. endures for the shorter of 95 years from the date of publication, or 120 years from its creation. Alternatively, for works created before 1978, the length of copyright protection in the U.S. is dependent upon several different factors, such as when the works were published, whether the work used the proper copyright © notice, whether the copyright was formally renewed, and whether the work was “restored.”
In other countries copyright durations vary on a country-by-country basis, based on a myriad of rules and factors. In most countries, however, copyrights generally last for 50, 75 or 100 years after the author's death. So, in some situations, a copyright covering a particular work may expire in one country, while copyrights covering the same work remain in force in other countries, and vice versa.
When copyright protection expires in a particular country, the work passes into the “public domain,” in that country. That is, the work becomes a “public-domain work”—i.e., the work is no longer protected by the copyright laws of the particular country—and may generally be copied and used without restriction in that particular country. There may be other reasons why a work passes into the public domain, such as (1) the author failed to satisfy statutory formalities to perfect the copyright, (2) the work is dedicated to the public by the copyright holder, or (3) the work was created by the government, such as the U.S. government, free of restriction.
It is challenging for digital-content distributors to comply with the many different copyright laws around the world, while also keeping up with demand to continuously make public-domain works in digital format available on a country-by-country basis.